Overview

Since taking office, this Administration has taken action to improve the quality and cost effectiveness of core administrative services. The Administration has closed or consolidated underutilized field offices, eliminated duplicative or overlapping programs, cut unnecessary travel and conference spending, and leveraged the buying power of the Federal Government to save money on the purchase of commodities such as office supplies and shipping services.

The Administration will sustain and intensify these efforts in the second term by:

Establishing cost and quality benchmarks for core/administrative operations, such as HR, Finance, Acquisition, and IT. We will leverage the agency executive councils to develop common standards and benchmarks to measure shared service utilization, performance, and cost. We will then use those standards and benchmarks for common administrative services as the baseline for driving continuous improvements in performance.

Cutting improper payments. Building on work already completed which has significantly reduced improper payments, we will advance data analytics and improved technology through the “Do Not Pay” tool to prevent these payments from happening, with the goal of a government-wide improper payment rate of 3 percent or less by the end of 2016.

Saving on real estate costs. By expanding on the “Freeze the Footprint” policy issued in 2012, we will begin publically tracking the Government’s adherence to a fixed baseline, and will continue to work with Agencies to pursue mobile workforce strategies and tighter internal controls. We will also work to improve the quality of data on the real estate inventory, and to develop key performance metrics. To view agency action toward implementing the Freeze the Footprint policy, please click here.